


One Impossible Thing Before Breakfast

by t_fic (topaz), topaz, topaz119 (topaz)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comment Fic, Domestic, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-06
Updated: 2010-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/t_fic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz119
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pancakes and Castiel don't mix well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Impossible Thing Before Breakfast

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [**spn_foxhole's Reunite Team Free Will Schmoop Meme**](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_foxhole/14610.html) for the prompt _Dean, Sam, Castiel, Lisa, Ben. Castiel attempts to make pancakes for everyone -- his first time cooking anything. It doesn't go well. Hilarity ensues. (background Dean/Lisa, hints of Dean/Castiel as well if you can work it in)_. I'm not sure about hilarity ensuing, but I think I got everything else.

The good thing about getting jolted out of well-earned and deeply-appreciated sleep by the smoke alarm shrieking in his ear at--Dean crawled over Lisa to squint at the bedside clock--mother_fucking_ 0637 was positive validation that yes, they'd picked an alarm that would wake anyone anywhere, and--good for Dean--he'd installed the damn system properly.

The bad thing was, no duh, motherfucking 0637 on the morning after he and Sam had rolled in well after midnight, covered in swamp water and mud and the remains of the lame Creature-From-The-Black-Lagoon wannabe they'd taken out.

The vague odors Dean could smell weren't ominous things like upholstery or insulation or even wood; he contemplated pulling the pillow over his head and pretending nothing was going on, but the alarm kept going and going and _going_.

"Do something about that," Lisa mumbled, poking him in the ribs.

"Me?"

"My kid knows how to make breakfast for himself. This one's all yours to deal with."

Dean could read the bad news in her eyes: he'd be lucky to be sleeping on the couch if he didn't fix things fast. He groaned and reached for his jeans. They'd landed on the floor, half inside-out from where he'd been fighting to get them off enough the night before. Given that he'd been working toward making good on the challenge Lisa had thrown at him--the one that had started with her wandering by and tucking her panties into the pocket of his coat, right in front of Sam--Dean felt he'd done damn good that the jeans weren't on the freaking _roof_.

Lisa reached out and traced a light, quick path over his hip, her fingertips dancing over where she'd scratched him up pretty good the night before, and Dean sucked in air like he'd never breathed in his life.

"Darlin'," he choked out. "Has anyone ever told you you're a tease?"

"Mmmm," Lisa mumured. "Not teasing. Motivating." Her hand slipped down to stroke over the top of his thigh and Dean's eyes nearly rolled back in his head. "The faster you take care of it…" Her voice trailed off suggestively.

"Right," Dean said. The fact that it came out more a squeak was completely irrelevant. "I am one hundred percent motivated. Don't move; I'll be right back."

He got his jeans up over his hips and buttoned them on the way out the door, stopping at the top of the stairs to get his act together a little. Lisa was right: Ben knew what he was doing in a kitchen; plus, Dean had no trouble recognizing burned pancakes when he smelled them, which meant Sam. Dean had been trying to teach him how to make pancakes for twenty years and it never took. He would have bet every last fake credit card he had stashed in the emergency kit that Sam would have been worn out from the last job, but apparently it wasn't Dean's lucky day.

He didn't bother with a shirt or shoes--hell, he hadn't bothered to find his boxers, so why worry about the rest of it--just stomped down the stairs and back toward the kitchen. The stomping was pretty much lost in the unholy racket of the alarm, but it gave him a good momentum to work with.

"For fuck's sake, Sam," Dean bellowed as he slammed open the kitchen door. "They're _pancakes_; it's not fucking rocket sci--"

He lost the last bit of his speech, everything going clean out of his head as soon as he realized the figure in front of the stove wasn't Sam. Sam was standing on a chair, fiddling with the alarm. Ben was sitting on the counter, both hands covering his ears. And Castiel was standing in front of the stove, waving smoke out of his face and poking curiously at the charred remains on the griddle.

"Shit," Dean said, crossing over to wrestle open the window over the sink. Even if Sam got the alarm off, it'd just start right back up if they didn't get some clear air into the room. "Shit," he repeated, right as Sam got the alarm turned off, so it came out nice and loud in the sudden silence.

"Thaaank youuuuu," Lisa sing-songed faintly from upstairs.

"Wow, language," Ben said, holding his hand out. Dean bit back another _fuck_ and dug around in his pockets.

"Here," he said, slapping two twenties into Ben's hand. "Not a word."

"Two fucks and two shits comes out to $60," Ben said, with a smile that didn't so much as waver when Dean glared at him.

"Oh, for--" Dean snapped his mouth closed again went through his pockets until he found a ten and a five and a couple of ones. "Don't push your luck; I know you hear worse at school every day."

"Oh, yeah," Ben agreed. "But Mom expects it there." He smoothed out the bills and tucked them into his back pocket, leaning over to high-five Sam as he dropped down off the chair lightly.

"Nice," Dean muttered. "Traitor."

"Hey! I _told_ you bribing the kid to keep his mouth shut was gonna bite you in the as--bite you," Sam said, dragging the chair back to the table. "But apparently it was too hard for you to change your vocabulary."

Dean managed not to flip Sam off, since that was worth another ten bucks in Ben's pocket, and, throwing in the towel on trying to pretend there wasn't an angel in the kitchen, turned back to the stove.

With the trench coat draped over the back of a chair, and pancake mix dusted over him from his eyelashes to the tips of his shoes, he looked less like Castiel, the archangel who made room in his busy schedule to check in on humanity from time to time, and more like Cas, the guy who'd stuck with them to the end, weird and never quite used to people, but not going away, someone Dean had ended up counting on, right up until he wasn't.

"Pancakes?" Dean asked, because he had to say something. "You couldn't just grab a bowl of Wheaties?"

"I was informed that pancakes were more of a celebratory item."

"What are we celebrating?" Dean asked, not all that surprised when it was Ben who answered, or that he lost all that thirteen-year-old cool he worked so hard to maintain when he did.

"Cas came to visit!"

"It seemed like a pancake-worthy event," Sam said, in that tone that said Dean needed to keep grip on things, which was only a little bit insulting, because yeah, Dean got it: Ben was right there, and he wasn't a part of any of this, even if Dean was big enough to admit that Cas was a sore spot with him.

Really sore.

Sore enough that Dean had to consciously stop grinding his teeth.

Maybe Sam had a point.

"It didn't work out so good," Ben admitted. "But, dude, you should have seen the smoke."

"Epic, huh?" Dean said, and saw Sam relax out of the corner of his eye. "Listen, bud, do us all a favor and take that pancake-shaped charcoal out to the trash in the back. Get the smell out of the house and let me see what I can do about getting some that are actually fit for human consumption going."

"Sure," Ben said, jumping down from the counter and digging a creased and grease-stained grocery bag out from under the sink. He held it out while Castiel dropped six still faintly-smoking, blackened disks into it, and snagged his coat on his way out. As soon as the door slammed shut behind him, Dean turned back to Castiel.

"Dean," Sam said, reading Dean's intent from across the room, and as much as Dean didn't want to have this conversation--say, like on the scale of not wanting to have ever had the conversation with Sam about Dad and demons and Mom--it was just time. He'd been biting his tongue on it for close to a year, arguing with himself over it every time Castiel showed up and talking himself out of it every time. Except this morning, it would appear his subconscious had finally had enough. "You don't--"

"What? Don't tell me you don't want me to do this," Dean said, crossing his arms, and oh, even better, he got to have the damn conversation dressed only in a pair of jeans, in the middle of what was currently passing as home base, _and_ in front of the one person in the world who wasn't going to ever let him brush it off after.

"Just making sure," Sam said.

"I'm good," Dean answered, low. Sam nodded once, and Dean turned back to Castiel, who was was watching them both with an unreadable expression on his face.

"You have to stop doing this," Dean said to Castiel. Sam crossed the kitchen, coming right up behind Dean, not saying anything but solid and sure and on Dean's six. For an instant, Dean got hit with the memories of how it'd felt knowing Sam wasn't there and he had to take a deep breath before he could go on. It was good, though; it let him find a little more of an even tone, let him be a little bit more sure of what he needed to say.

"You can't just show up every couple of months, zap in and grace us with your presence, and then pretend like we don't exist until the next time you're bored." Dean was tempted to add that it wasn't fair to Ben, but even he knew that one wasn't going to fly.

"What would you have me do?" Castiel's eyes were still the same deep blue, grave and concerned as always, but Dean thought there was maybe a hint of frustration there, too. That wasn't anything particularly new--Dean had seen it in varying degrees almost right from the start--but it hadn't been around much lately.

Once Sam had come back and Dean had sorted through all the crap that had opened up--okay, _started_ sorting through all the crap, whatever; they were dealing with it--Castiel had watched and waited and always had more important things to do. Heaven was a big deal, and it was a mess these days--Dean got that. He just hadn't quite realized how much he'd gotten used to having a semi-annoyed angel hanging around with him until Cas had gone to deal with something other than the Winchesters.

"Dean," Castiel snapped, and yes, definitely impatient, Dean thought. "What would you have me do? You have a life here. A good one. You have a family. Sam, Ben." He hesitated before he added, "Li--"

"Lisa," Lisa said, from the door, and seriously, Dean wanted to know who he'd pissed off lately, because this whole morning just kept getting better and better. "You can say my name, even if it is a little insulting that you think I can deal just fine with the hunting but I'll fall apart if the angel who used to be a little more than good friends shows up on any kind of a regular basis."

"It is not something I would chance," Castiel said, looking past Dean to meet Lisa's eyes. "It is too important. You are too important."

"So are you," Lisa said, quietly. "You think I'd hold it against you--against Dean--that you were there when things were really bad?" Dean wasn't exactly sure what he'd said in the first couple of days after he'd shown up on her doorstep, but he supposed he shouldn't be surprised she'd figured everything out anyway.

"It was stupid of me," Castiel said, finally. Sam snorted, and Lisa rolled her eyes.

"Yeah," Lisa said. "It sure was."

After a few seconds, Castiel relaxed and tilted his head back toward Dean, calm and serene once again. Lisa stayed where she was, leaning against the kitchen door, but she had a little smile on her face. And Sam--Sam leaned in close to murmur, "Game, set, match."

Dean didn't even have to turn around to know that Sam was wearing his the _yay, aren't we all proud of Dean for talking about things?_ smirk.

"Everybody done with the sharing and caring?" Dean asked. Sam huffed behind him, and smacked him on the shoulder once before he settled himself again at the table.

"What would you have me do?" Castiel asked, once more, but this time it was an honest question, not the frustrated challenge it had been before. It was an easy question to answer.

"For starters," Dean said, as Ben stormed up the back steps and through the kitchen door, bringing a blast of cold air with him. "You could practice not burning down the kitchen when you show up. They're just pancakes, man."

"It is a more complex process than it would seem." Cas had that smile in his eyes, the one that Dean honestly hadn't seen since the apocalypse had ended.

"That's because you were listening to Sam over there," Dean said, reaching for the pancake mix. "The genius who'd starve without take-out." Sam smiled at him and raised his middle finger to scratch innocently at his eyebrow. It was just Dean's luck that Ben missed the whole thing, so Sam wasn't going to be paying any blood money. Then again, judging from the look on Lisa's face as she went to pour herself a cup of coffee, _she_ hadn't missed it, so there was going to be some groveling in the near future.

Dean couldn't wait.


End file.
